LOS ANGELES — Movie ticket sales around the world rose 6 percent last year, to $34.7 billion from $32.6 billion in 2011, as China became the world’s second-biggest market for theatrical films after the United States, according to statistics released by the Motion Picture Association of America on Thursday.

The Chinese box office reached $2.7 billion in 2012, up 36 percent from the year-earlier total, to surpass Japan’s $2.4 billion, the association said.

Ticket sales in the United States and Canada, which are tallied together, rose 6 percent in 2012, to $10.8 billion, from $10.2 billion a year earlier, while sales in other countries posted a similar gain, increasing to $23.9 billion from $22.4 billion.

In the United States, the report noted, the increase was driven by a rise in the number of tickets sold, to about 1.36 billion from 1.28 billion a year earlier, while the average ticket price remained almost flat, at $7.96, compared to $7.93 a year earlier.

While the number of 3-D screens around the world rose about 27 percent in 2012, to 45,545 from 35,792 in 2011, the domestic box-office take from 3-D films was $1.8 billion, the same as in 2011, the association said.

In one of the report’s more intriguing statistics, 74 percent of the population of Illinois saw a movie in 2012 — the highest share in any of the 12 most populous states. That outstripped the percentage of moviegoers in Ohio, where only 59 percent reported seeing a film. The report did not identify a reason for the disparity.

California had the highest number of moviegoers, 26.8 million, more than twice the number in New York, which had 12.6 million.

Continuing a trend that has been visible since 2007, the number of movies released in 2012 by members of the association — which include the major film studios — fell by 9 percent, to 128, from 141 a year earlier. The year’s total was down 37 percent from 2006, when the studios released 204 films.

The decline has been steepest among the studios’ specialty film subsidiaries, whose schedules are typically heavy with the sort of adult-oriented dramas that compete for awards. The specialty units released 34 films last year, down about 59 percent from a recent peak of 82 films in 2007.

Releases by companies that do not belong to the movie association rose 17 percent last year, to 549 from 468. The rising number of independent films includes many movies that play only on a small number of theatrical screens, depending for their revenue on video-on-demand and other home entertainment distribution.

The total number of films released theatrically in 2012 was 677, compared with 609 in 2011 and 455 in 2003, the association said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/business/media/global-ticket-sales-for-movies-rise.html?partner=rss&emc=rss